Jack Kerouac - Poet | Academy of American Poets Academy of American Poets The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization. browse poems & poets Beat Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on March 12, 1922, Jack Kerouac, baptised Jean Louis Kirouac, was the youngest of three children of French-Canadian immigrants from Quebec, Canada. He was raised speaking the French-Canadian working class dialect Joual until he learned English at age five. Kerouac studied at local Catholic public schools and the Horace Mann School in New York City, as well as Columbia University and The New School.

He was awarded athletic scholarships to attend Boston College, University of Notre Dame, and Columbia University, though an injury during his freshman season at Columbia kept him from playing and eventually led to his dropping out of school. In 1942, Kerouac joined the United States Merchant Marine, and a year later joined the United States Navy—he served only eight days of active duty before being honorably discharged on psychiatric grounds. Soon after, Kerouac was involved in the murder of David Kammerer, having helped his friend Lucien Carr dispose of evidence, and was arrested as a material witness. Unable to convince his father to pay for bail, Kerouac agreed to marry fellow writer Edie Parker in exchange for her financial support and moved to Detroit, Michigan. Their marriage was quickly annulled due to infidelity, and Kerouac returned to New York City in 1944. Upon Kerouac's return to New York, he lived with his parents in Queens, where he wrote his first novel, The Town and the City (Harcourt Brace, 1950). Through Lucien Carr, Kerouac had met many of the literary figures now associated with the Beat Generation , including Allen Ginsberg and William S.

Burroughs, and in 1949 he began his most famous literary work, On the Road (Viking Press, 1957), which was tentatively titled "The Beat Generation" and "Gone on the Road." Kerouac finished the largely autobiographical novel in April 1951, though it remained unpublished until 1957. During that time, Kerouac completed ten other autobiographical novels, including The Subterraneans (Grove Press, 1958), Doctor Sax (Grove Press, 1959), Tristessa (Avon, 1960), and Desolation Angels (Coward McCann, 1965). In July of 1957, Kerouac moved to Orlando, Florida, while awaiting the release of On the Road later that year. Soon after, the New York Times ran a review lauding Kerouac as the voice of a new generation. The success of the novel garnered Kerouac celebrity status as a major American author, and his friendship with Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Gregory Corso cemented the influence of what became known as the Beat Generation.

Other poet friends of Kerouac include Philip Lamantia, Gary Snyder , Philip Whalen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti , Michael McClure, Bob Kaufman , Diane di Prima , Lew Welch, and Amiri Baraka . Though best known for his novels, Kerouac is also associated with poetry of the Beat movement, including spoken word. Kerouac wrote that he wanted "to be considered as a jazz poet blowing a long blues in an afternoon jazz session on Sunday." And in his "Statement on Poetics" for The New American Poetry , he asserts: Add alluvials to the end of your line when all is exhausted but something has to be said for some specified irrational reason, since reason can never win out, because poetry is NOT a science. The rhythm of how you 'rush' yr statement determines the rhythm of the poem, whether it is a poem in verse-separated lines, or an endless one-line poem called prose . . .

In his introduction to Kerouac's Book of Blues, the poet Robert Creeley writes, "A complaint commonly lodged against Kerouac is that he was at best a self-taught 'natural,' at worst an example of the cul de sac the autodidact in the arts invariably comes to, a solipsistic 'world' of his own limitations and confusions." He goes on to state that Kerouac's poems themselves "provide an intensely vivid witness of both writer and time." Other books published later in Kerouac's career include The Dharma Bums and Big Sur. Jack Kerouac died from a chronic liver disease on October 21, 1969, at St. Anthony's Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, the result of a lifetime of heavy drinking.

Selected Bibliography Scattered Poems (City Lights, 1971) Mexico City Blues (Grove Press, 1959) Fiction Desolation Angels (Coward McCann, 1965) Tristessa (Avon, 1960) Jack Kerouac - Wikiquote Jack Kerouac Jump to: navigation , search All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land. Jack Kerouac ( 12 March 1922 – 21 October 1969 ), born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac, was an American novelist , poet and artist . He was a central figure among Beat Generation writers. Maybe that's what life is... a wink of the eye and winking stars . See also: Quotes[ edit ] I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down. Who knows, my God , but that the universe is not one vast sea of compassion actually, the veritable holy honey, beneath all this show of personality and cruelty ? The fact that everybody in the world dreams every night ties all mankind together.

Maybe that's what life is... a wink of the eye and winking stars . Letter to Alan Harrington (23 April 1949) published in Kerouac: Selected Letters: Volume 1 1940-1956 (1996) All of life is a foreign country. Letter to John Clellon Holmes (24 June 1949), published in The Beat Vision: A Primary Sourcebook (1987) edited by Arthur Knight and Kit Knight, page 93. I want to work in revelations , not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down. Letter to Ed White (5 July 1950) as published in The Missouri Review, Vol. XVII, No. 3, 1994, page 137, and also quoted in Jack Kerouac: Angelheaded Hipster (1996) by Steve Turner, p.

117 I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life , and not only life but that great consciousness of life.

Journal entry (November 1951) as published in the Kerouac ROMnibus Write in recollection and amazement for yourself "Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials" in a letter to Arabelle Porter (28 May 1955); published in Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1940-1956 (1995) and in a letter to Don Allen (1958); published in Heaven & Other Poems (1977) Accept loss forever "Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials" in a letter to Arabelle Porter (28 May 1955); published in Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1940-1956 (1995) and in a letter to Don Allen (1958); published in Heaven & Other Poems (1977) Believe in the holy contour of life "Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials" in a letter to Arabelle Porter (28 May 1955); published in Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1940-1956 (1

995) and in a letter to Don Allen (1958); published in Heaven & Other Poems (1977) Be in love with your life every detail of it "Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials" in a letter to Arabelle Porter (28 May 1955); published in Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1940-1956 (1995).

Sometimes misquoted as "Be in love with your life every minute of it." We should be wondering tonight, "Is there a world ?" But I could go and talk on 5, 10, 20 minutes about is there a world, because there is really no world, cause sometimes I'm walkin' on the ground and I see right through the ground. And there is no world. And you'll find out. "Is There A Beat Generation?" forum at Hunter College , New York, New York (8 November 1958) Who knows, my God , but that the universe is not one vast sea of compassion actually, the veritable holy honey, beneath all this show of personality and cruelty ?

"The Origins of the Beat Generation" in Playboy (June 1959) Listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world Letter to Edith Parker Kerouac (28 January 1957); published in Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1957-1969 (1999) John Clellon Holmes … and I were sitting around trying to think up the meaning of the Lost Generation and the subsequent Existentialism and I said, 'You know, this is really a beat generation' and he leapt up and said 'That's it, that's right!' "The Origins of the Beat Generation" in Playboy (June 1959), explaining the origins of the term the "Beat Generation". I went one afternoon to the church of my childhood and had a vision of what I must have really meant with "Beat"… the vision of the word Beat as being to mean beatific... People began to call themselves beatniks, beats, jazzniks, bopniks, bugniks and finally I was called the " avatar " of all this.

"The Origins of the Beat Generation" in Playboy (June 1959) Members of the generation that came of age after World War II-Korean War who join in a relaxation of social and sexual tensions, and who espouse anti-regimentation, mystic -disaffiliation, and material-simplicity values , supposedly as a result of cold-war disillusionment. Coined by Jack Kerouac. Definition of "Beat Generation" offered to Random House publishers in 1959, after being asked him if there was anything he'd like to add to the definition they were preparing for the American College Dictionary: "Certain members of the generation that came of age after World War II who affect detachment from moral and social forms and responsibilities, supposedly the result of disillusionment. Coined by Jack Kerouac." The Random House definition eventually published read: "members of the generation that came of age after World War II who, supposedly as a result of disillusionment stemming from the Cold War, espoused forms of mysticism and the relaxation of social and sexual inhibitions." It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to hang their peculiar beatnik theories on.

The New York Journal-American (8 Dec 1960) My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet. As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind . I'm a wretch. But I love , love. Satori in Paris (1966) The house stood, and other men lived in it and were sheltered well in it... You can't fight City Hall. It keeps changing its name. "After Me, The Deluge" in The Chicago Tribune (28 September 1969) All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land. Pomes All Sizes (1992) The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!" As early pioneers in the knowing, that when you lose your reason , you attain highest perfect knowing.

Book of Blues (1995) So long and take it easy, because if you start taking things seriously, it is the end of you. Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings (1999) The fact that everybody in the world dreams every night ties all mankind together. Book of Dreams (1961) Foreword Variant: All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together. As misquoted in Night and Day (1989) by Jack Maguire, p. 221; Maguire does not cite his source, so this widely quoted variant appears to be an erroneous paraphrase of this published statement. It is not a direct quote from some other statement by Kerouac. The tree looks like a dog , barking at heaven . Book of Haikus (2003) Everything belongs to me because I am poor. Visions Of Cody (1973) and The Beginning Of Bop (1959) All you do is head straight for the grave, a face just covers a skull awhile. Stretch that skull-cover and smile.

Visions Of Cody (1973) "What are you trying to do, Kerouac?" I'd ask myself in my sleepingbag at night, "trying to deny reality with all this Buddha stuff, ya jerk?" … "Poor detailed immaculate incarnate fool, and you call yourself Self … Take off your coat and crash wits." And I realized that all this Buddhism was a STRAIN at telling the untellable emptiness yet that nothing was truer, a perfect paradox. Meditation in the Woods (1958) I am going to marry my novels and have little short stories for children. Kerouac, as quoted by Allen Ginsberg in The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice (2006), page 250. Your art is the Holy Ghost blowing through your soul. A misquote. It derives from an interview that journalist Bruce Cook conducted with Kerouac in 1968 and reported in his book The Beat Generation (1971). According to Cook, Kerouac explained to him his method of writing: "I'll just sit down and let it flow out of me ... It's the Holy Ghost that comes through you.

You don't have to be a Catholic to know what I mean, and you don't have to be a Catholic for the Holy Ghost to speak through you." Source of misquote. The Town and the City (1950)[ edit ] He saw that all the struggles of life were incessant, laborious, painful, that nothing was done quickly, without labor, that it had to undergo a thousand fondlings, revisings, moldings, addings, removings, graftings, tearings, correctings, smoothings, rebuildings, reconsiderings, nailings, tackings, chippings, hammerings, hoistings, connectings — all the poor fumbling uncertain incompletions of human endeavor. They went on forever and were forever incomplete, far from perfect, refined, or smooth, full of terrible memories of failure and fears of failure, yet, in the way of things, somehow noble, complete, and shining in the end.

This he could sense even from the old house they lived in, with its solidly built walls and floors that held together like rock: some man, possibly an angry pessimistic man, had built the house long ago, but the house stood, and his anger and pessimism and irritable labourious sweats were forgotten; the house stood, and other men lived in it and were sheltered well in it. These are a few samples from this work, for more see the page for On the Road Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night? They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!" Part One, Ch.

1 So I rushed past the pretty girls, and the prettiest girls in the world live in Des Moines. Part One, Ch. 3 Whither goest thou, America , in thy shiny car in the night ? Part Two, Ch. 3 I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion. The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes us sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced (though we hate to admit it) in death . Part Two, Ch. 4 I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night , what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion. Part Two, Ch. 4 "What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies." Part Two, Ch.

8 "It was sad to see his tall figure receding in the dark as we drove away, just like the other figures in New York and New Orleans: they stand uncertainly underneth inmense skies, and everything about them is drowned. Where go? what do? what for? — sleep ." Part Two, Ch. 8 What's heaven ? What's earth ? All in the mind . At one point the driver said, "For God 's sakes, you're rocking the boat back there." Actually we were; the car was swaying as Dean and I both swayed to the rhythm and the IT of our final excited joy in talking and living to the blank tranced end of all innumerable riotous angelic particulars that had been lurking in our souls all our lives . Part Three, Ch. 5 In 1942 I was the star in one of the filthiest dramas of all time. I was a seaman, and went to the Imperial Café on Scollay Square in Boston to drink; I drank sixty glasses of beer and retired to the toilet, where I wrapped myself around the toilet bowl and went to sleep.

During the night at least a hundred seamen and assorted civilians came in and cast their sentient debouchements on me till I was unrecognizably caked. What difference does it make after all? — anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven , for what's heaven? what's earth? All in the mind . Part Three, Ch. 11 So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear?

the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty. Part Five The Dharma Bums (1958)[ edit ] Now you understand the Oriental passion for tea … I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you... I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted. "Now you understand the Oriental passion for tea ," said Japhy. "Remember that book I told you about; the first sip is joy , the second is gladness, the third is serenity , the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy." Pretty girls make graves.

Colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middleclass non-identity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets in each living room with everybody looking at the same thing and thinking the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness... I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling. Ecstacy, even, I felt, with flashes of sudden remembrance, and feeling sweaty and drowsy I felt like sleeping and dreaming in the grass. Sociability is just a big smile, and a big smile is nothing but teeth.

I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted. Trouble with you is you don't do plenty night zazen especially when it's cold out, that's best, besides you should get married and have halfbreed babies, manuscripts, homespun blankets and mother's milk on your happy ragged mat floor like this one. Get yourself a hut house not too far from town, live cheap, go ball in the bars once in awhile, write and rumble in the hills and learn how to saw boards and talk to grandmas you damn fool, carry loads of wood for them, clap your hands at shrines, get supernatural favors, take flower-arrangement lessons and grow chrysanthemums by the door, and get married for krissakes, get a friendly smart sensitive human-being gal who don't give a shit for martinis every night and all that dumb white shit in the kitchen. Then I added "Blah," with a little grin, because I knew that shack and that mountain would understand what that meant, and turned and went on down the trail back to this world.

Lonesome Traveler (1960)[ edit ] No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength. Learning for instance, to eat when he's hungry and sleep when he's sleepy. Thinking of the stars night after night I begin to realize "The stars are words " and all the innumerable worlds in the Milky Way are words, and so is this world too. And I realize that no matter where I am, whether in a little room full of thought, or in this endless universe of stars and mountains, it's all in my mind . One night I realized that when you give people understanding and encouragement a funny little meek childish look abashes their eyes, no matter what they've been doing they weren't sure it was right — lambies all over the world. The happiness consists in realizing that it is all a great strange dream .

Big Sur (1962)[ edit ] Ah, life is a gate, a way, a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love … Ah, life is a gate, a way, a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some sort of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH … Everything is the same, the fog says 'We are fog and we fly by dissolving like ephemera,' and the leaves say 'We are leaves and we jiggle in the wind, that's all, we come and go, grow and fall' — Even the paper bags in my garbage pit say 'We are mantransformed paper bags made out of wood pulp, we are kinda proud of being paper bags as long as that will be possible, but we'll be mush again with our sisters the leaves come rainy season' — The tree stumps say 'We are tree stumps torn out of the ground by men, sometimes by the wind, we have big tendrils full of earth that drink out of the earth' — Men say 'We are men, we pull out tree stumps, we make paper bags, we think wise thoughts, we make lunch,

 we look around, we make a great effort to realise everything is the same.' I feel guilty for being a member of the human race.

Desolation Angels (1965)[ edit ] I will die, and you will die, and we all will die, and even the stars will fade out one after another in time . And I will die, and you will die, and we all will die, and even the stars will fade out one after another in time . But O Sarina come with me to my bed of woes, let me love you gently in the night, long time, we got all night, till dawn, till Juliet's rising sun and Romeo's vial sink, till I have slaked my thirst of Samsara at your portal rosy petal lips and left saviour juice in your rosy flesh garden to melt and dry and ululate another baby for the void, come sweet Sarina in my naughty arms, be dirty in my clean milk, and I'll detest the defecate I leave in your milky empowered cyst-and-vulva chamber, your cloacan clara file-hool through which slowly drool the hall-gyzm, to castles in your hassel flesh and I'll protect you trembling thighs against my heart and kiss your lips and cheeks and Lair and love you everywhere and that'll be that...

There's your Karma ripe as peaches . I could give you a list a mile long of the homosexuals in the arts but there's no point in making a big tzimis about a relatively harmless and cool state of affairs — Each man to his own tastes. Everything is going to the beat — It's the beat generation, it be-at, it's the beat to keep, it's the beat of the heart, it's being beat and down in the world and like oldtime lowdown and like in ancient civilizations the slave boatmen rowing galleys to a beat and servants spinning pottery to a beat... There's your Karma ripe as peaches . A sociable smile is nothing but teeth. Sometimes misquoted as "A sociable smile is nothing but a mouth full of teeth." Visions of Cody (1960)[ edit ] I accept lostness forever. It no longer makes me cry and die and tear myself to see her go because everything goes away from me like that now — girls, visions , anything, just in the same way and forever and I accept lostness forever.

I'm writing this book because we're all going to die — In the loneliness of my life, my father dead, my brother dead, my mother far away, my sister and my wife far away, nothing here but my own tragic hands that once were guarded by a world, a sweet attention, that now are left to guide and disappear their own way into the common dark of all our death , sleeping in me raw bed, alone and stupid... The mad road, lonely, leading around the bend into the openings of space towards the horizon Wasatch snows promised us in the vision of the West, spine heights at the world's end, coast of blue Pacific starry night — nobone halfbanana moons sloping in the tangled night sky, the torments of great formations in mist, the huddled invisible insect in the car racing onwards, illuminate.

— The raw cut, the drag, the butte, the star, the draw, the sunflower in the grass — orangebutted west lands of Arcadia, forlorn sands of the isolate earth, dewy exposures to infinity in black space, home of the rattlesnake and the gopher the level of the world, low and flat: the charging restless mute unvoiced road keening in a seizure of tarpaulin power into the route. Kerouac understood long before I did. Life is a dream , he said. ~ William S. Burroughs Alphabetized by author I read On the Road in maybe 1959. It changed my life like it changed everyone else's. ~ Bob Dylan If you tell certain people that you like Kerouac, they assume that’s all you read, like you don’t know anything else about literature . ~ Ben Gibbard I grew up with Kerouac. If he hadn't wrote On The Road, the Doors would have never existed. ~ Ray Manzarek Did you never let Jack Kerouac Wash over you in waves? ~ Richard Thompson He did more in one lifetime than most people do in ten.

~ Philip Whalen I consider On The Road sort of holy because it helped change my life as it did to so many others and as it continues to do so. Jack wanted his papers enshrined in a library but they are now in the hands of highly non-literary people more interested in their monetary value than in their literary or cultural value. Bad Religion , in " Stranger than Fiction " on Stranger than Fiction (1994) Writers are, in a way, very powerful indeed. They write the script for the reality film. Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rises from his pages. Now if writers could get together into a real tight union, we'd have the world right by the words . We could write our own universes , and they would be as real as a coffee bar or a pair of Levis or a prom in the Jazz Age. Writers could take over the reality studio. So they must not be allowed to find out that they can make it happen. Kerouac understood long before I did. Life is a dream , he said. William S.

Burroughs , in "Remembering Jack Kerouac" (1985), included in The Adding Machine : Selected Essays (1993), p. 180 That's not writing. It's typing. Truman Capote , as quoted in New Republic (9 February 1959), also n Roger Ebert's Movie Home Companion (1986) by Roger Ebert , p. 283 I read On the Road in maybe 1959. It changed my life like it changed everyone else's. Bob Dylan , as quoted Grasping for the Wind : The Search for Meaning in the 20th Century (2001) by John W. Whitehead Someone handed me Mexico City Blues in St. Paul [Minnesota] in 1959 and it blew my mind. It was the first poetry that spoke my own language. Bob Dylan , as quoted in Jack Kerouac (2007) by Alison Behnke, p.

100 Some times feeling like Holden Caulfield , sometimes Jack Kerouac Five Iron Frenzy in Superpowers I pulled On The Road off the shelf and found myself reading it between classes, and at that time in my life it was exactly what I craved, exactly what I needed to hear. I thought, “That’s the way, that’s the ideal life, that’s great. You get in a car and you drive and you see your friends and you end up in a city for a night and you go out drinking and you catch up and you share these really intense experiences. And then you’re on the road and you’re doing it again.” The romance of the road, particularly from Kerouac’s work, encapsulated how I wanted to live. I found a way to do it by being a musician, which is what I always wanted to be. The traveling and the being on tour and being away from home set a precedent for me where I thought, “Oh yeah, this is how it works.” But then in reading Big Sur, it’s the end of the road.

You end up with a series of failed relationships and you end up being an alcoholic and in your late 30s, and not having any kind of real grip on the lives of the people around you. That’s the potential other end of the spectrum when you’re never tied to anybody or anything. I run the risk of losing touch with the people in my life that mean the most to me because I have made the decision to live like this. Ben Gibbard , in "The Meaning Of Life" in Paste magazine (10 April 2008) If you tell certain people that you like Kerouac, they assume that’s all you read, like you don’t know anything else about literature. I recognize all the things that people dislike about the way he writes — his tone and the sentimentality of it all. But those books were there for me at a very important point in my life.

Ben Gibbard , in "The Meaning Of Life" in Paste magazine (10 April 2008) Because of my age and what I do for a living and the amount of time that I’ve spent away from my family and loved ones, I’m starting to relate more to the late-period Kerouac stuff in the way that I once related to the fun and excitement of the early material. There’s a darkness inside of me that I’m only now starting to come to grips with and accept. And it’s starting to scare me. Ben Gibbard , in "The Meaning Of Life" in Paste magazine (10 April 2008) Once when Kerouac was high on psychedelics with Timothy Leary , he looked out the window and said, "Walking on water wasn't built in a day ." Our goal was to save the planet and alter human consciousness. That will take a long time , if it happens at all. Allen Ginsberg , as quoted in Talk to Her (2004) by Kristine McKenna, p. 75 You're not punk, and I'm telling everyone. Save your breath, I never was one.

You don't know what I'm all about Like killing cops and reading Kerouac Jawbreaker , in "Boxcar" on 24 Hour Revenge Therapy (1994) Kerouac had lots of class — stumbling drunk in the end , but read those last books. He never blames anybody else; he always blames himself. If there is a bad guy, it’s poor old drunk Jack, stumbling around. You never hear him railing at the government or railing at this or that. He likes trains , people , bums, cars . He just paints a wonderful picture of Norman Rockwell ’s world. Of course it’s Norman Rockwell on a lot of dope . Ken Kesey , in "Ken Kesey, The Art of Fiction No. 136" by Robert Faggen, in The Paris Review No. 130 (Spring 1994) Of the Beat triumvirate, Kerouac was probably both the most pathetic and least noxious. Psychologically, he was a mess—as indeed were Ginsberg and Burroughs . But, unlike them, Kerouac lacked the knack of sanctifying his pathologies and inducing others to bow down in obeisance.

Roger Kimball , "A gospel of emancipation", The New Criterion, October 1997 Texas in the summer is cool We'll be on the road like Jack Kerouac, lookin' back Sam, you're ready, let's go anywhere Get the car packed and throw me the key Run away with me Brian Lowdermilk and Kait Kerrigan , in The Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown If you're working with words, it's got to be poetry . I grew up with Kerouac. If he hadn't wrote On The Road, the Doors would have never existed. Morrison read On The Road down in Florida , and I read it in Chicago. That sense of freedom , spirituality , and intellectuality in On The Road — that's what I wanted in my own work .

Jack Kerouac's Famous Scroll, 'On the Road' Again : NPR Jack Kerouac's Famous Scroll, 'On the Road' Again Embed Embed Jack Kerouac's Famous Scroll, 'On the Road' Again Jack Kerouac's Famous Scroll, 'On the Road' Again Embed Embed Heard on All Things Considered Andrea Shea Beat writer Jack Kerouac, pictured in 1965, cultivated the myth that On the Road came to him in a three-week rush, but the truth is he wrote, rewrote and revised again. Hulton Archive/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Malcolm Cowley to Viking Press, 1953: "There is a book here that should and must be published." hide caption toggle caption Malcolm Cowley to Viking Press, 1953: "There is a book here that should and must be published." The Scroll Unrolled For the 50th anniversary of its publication, Kerouac's On the Road scroll is on the road. Right now it's in Lowell, Mass., where the writer was born in 1922 and buried in 1969.

Christies hide caption toggle caption Read the Opening Passage This September marks 50 years since Jack Kerouac's On the Road hit bookshelves, stirred controversy and spoke — in a new voice — to a generation of readers. Today the beat travelogue continues to sell 100,000 copies a year in the U.S. and Canada alone. Legend has it that Kerouac wrote On the Road in three weeks, typing it almost nonstop on a 120-foot roll of paper. The truth is that the book actually had a much longer, bumpier journey from inspiration to publication, complete with multiple rewrites, repeated rejections and a dog who — well, On the Road wasn't homework, but we all know what dogs do. But the scroll: That part's true. Jim Canary, the Indiana University conservator who's responsible for its care, says Kerouac typed about 100 words a minute, and replacing regular sheets of paper in his typewriter just interrupted his flow — thus the scroll. But Kerouac's brother-in-law and executor, John Sampas, says the three-week story is a kind of self-created myth.

"Three weeks" is what Kerouac answered when talk-show host Steve Allen asked how long it took to write On the Road. "And so this gave the impression that Jack just spontaneously wrote this book in three weeks," Sampas says. "I think what Jack should've said was, 'I typed it up in three weeks.'" Article continues after sponsorship Kerouac scholar Paul Marion agrees. "Kerouac cultivated this myth that he was this spontaneous prose man, and that everything that he ever put down was never changed, and that's not true," Marion says. "He was really a supreme craftsman, and devoted to writing and the writing process." In truth, Marion says, Kerouac heavily reworked On the Road — first in his head, then in his journals between 1947 and 1949, and then again on his typewriter. Between 1951 and 1957, Kerouac tinkered with as many as six drafts in a desperate attempt to get editors to accept his work, according to Sampas.

A letter from Kerouac to fellow beat writer Neal Cassady, dated June 1951, complains about a rejection from one publisher and mentions that Kerouac is shopping for an agent. That agent was Sterling Lord, who says he was immediately taken with the power of Kerouac's unconventional tale. "I didn't ever dream that this would be the huge seller that it has become — although I didn't think it wouldn't — but I felt that Jack's was a very important new voice and he ought to be heard," Lord says. "And I was totally convinced of that." Lord pitched On the Road to publishing house after publishing house, only to be told the manuscript was "unpublishable." He says one of the book's biggest advocates was author and editor Malcolm Cowley, an adviser to Viking Press — and even he had reservations, expressed in an internal memo dated 1953, with a paragraph headlined "Faults": "The author is solemn about himself and about Dean," Cowley wrote. "Some of his best episodes would get the book suppressed for obscenity but I think there is a book here that should and must be published." Despite that endorsement, Viking rejected On the Road.

It went on to EP Dutton, where it also languished, and Kerouac complained in a May 1954 letter to Allen Ginsberg that yet another publisher "is sitting on 4 of my pieces. All of the others are in my agent's drawers unread and dusting. What the hell is the use?" And so it went, until the mid-'50s, when a new crop of young, receptive editors — and enthusiastic response to On the Road excerpts printed in The Paris Review — helped persuade Viking to publish it. They offered a $900 advance; Lord talked them up to $1,000, but the publisher, fearing the author would squander the money, insisted on paying it out in $100 installments. "It didn't make any difference to Jack," Lord says. "He had a publisher." But On the Road's journey didn't end there. Viking sent the manuscript to lawyers who wanted the names of real people, such as Ginsberg and Cassady, changed for fear of libel. Other things were edited, too. Conservator Jim Canary is fond of pointing out the differences between the original scroll and the published book.

"In the book, it says 'My aunt once said the world would never find peace until men fell at their women's feet and asked for forgiveness, but Dean knew this,'" Canary points out. In the scroll, though, the passage went on: My mother once said the world would never find peace until men fell at their women's feet and asked for forgiveness. This is true all over the world in the jungles of Mexico, in the back streets of Shang Hai, in New York cocktail bars, husbands are getting drunk while the women stay home with the babes of their ever darkening future. If these men stop the machine and come home and get on their knees and ask for forgiveness and the women bless them peace will suddenly descend on the earth with a great silence like the inherent silence of the apocalypse. "I mean, that's a little different, don't you think?" Canary laughs. Kerouac reportedly complained to Allen Ginsberg that Viking botched his manuscript. Lord, his agent, says the editing was handled gracefully. One thing that may never be known is how Kerouac wrapped up the story the first time, back in 1951.

"The very end of the scroll is missing, and it's just a ragged edge," says Canary. "Jack wrote on there, 'Ate by Patchkee, a dog' — and that was Lucien Carr's cocker spaniel. "We don't really have the original ending." Kerouac's 'On the Road' Manuscript Unfurled Kerouac's 'On the Road' Manuscript Unfurled Embed Embed

Question: Which us writer wrote "On The Road" in 1958?
Answer: Jack Kerouac